


Such A Good Cook The Fire Alarm Cheers For Me

by teshumai



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, Mentions of alcoholism, very slight insinuation of paul/james
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 12:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3610305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teshumai/pseuds/teshumai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times James fucked up in the kitchen and one time he knew exactly what he was doing</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Light The Fire Within

**Author's Note:**

> thanks you rirreal for betaing :)

James’ first real adventure with living on his own is in Iowa. He has his own apartment. It’s tiny but it’s his and he’s going to win the shit out this adulting thing. Spoiler alert: he does not. Three months later he’s still living out of boxes and he hasn’t figured out how to use the stove, (not that it matters since he also doesn’t own any cooking things). Rich laughs at him when he finally admits it and then comes over and they drink cheap beer and unpack until they end up collapsed on the floor giggling over James’ transformers shirts. 

The next afternoon he takes James grocery shopping. Much to James’ surprise, Rich completely bypasses the fresh produce section and laughs at James’ confusion.

“I think that’s a little advanced for you right now, Nealsy.” he says, throwing a couple of bags of enriched pasta in the cart, along with few varieties of sauce that say things like “includes real vegetables”. They head up the frozen food section and Rich pauses. He looks at James consideringly for a moment before grabbing a bag of hamburgers. “Don’t make these without me,” he warns.

They do swing by the produce section after Rich has filled the cart with pastas and microwave bags of veggies and meat. He grabs a bag of tangerines and a sack of potatoes. “These are great, you just throw them in the microwave and hit the potato button, not even you can fuck that up,” he says, sending James to pay. 

The potatoes are a pretty sweet purchase. They are easy, they’re filling when James doesn’t want to actually have a meal but still needs to eat, and he’s even mastered melting cheese on them. The only problem is sometimes the bigger potatoes don’t get soft enough all the way through. James figures if you want something more cooked you cook it more. That’s pretty basic logic there, James is confident in that train of thought. So next time he makes one of the bigger potatoes, instead of pressing one when prompted for the number of potatoes, he hits two and walks away. 

Six minutes later there is smoke leaking out of the microwave and through the gray haze he can see a flickering orange light, and oh shit, his microwave is on fire. He hits the door release as fast as possible and the smoke pours out to disperse throughout the apartment and James is left staring at the flames crackling along the top of his potato. He has no idea what do. He thinks throwing water into his microwave would do more harm than good, he doesn’t actually know but he can’t stop the image of his microwave covered in blue lightning like in those stupid kid shows. He doesn’t have any tools to safely remove the potato without burning himself, either, so he ends up just staring at it as the flames slowly die down and eventually disappear. Once it seems safe he grabs a towel and drops the potato into the sink where he runs cold water on it for a minute before tossing it in the garbage. 

Turns out dish soap is great at removing smoke stains from glass.


	2. Pardon Me, While I Burst Into Flames

James was trying to do a nice thing. Rich is sick and James can reheat soup thank you very much, he’s not that hopeless. He’s been living on his own for nearly six months now and he’s mastered the art of boiling water for pasta, soup is basically the same principle plus he doesn’t have to boil it, just heat it up a little. It was all going so well too. Except James gets distracted playing bejeweled and next thing he knows the pot of soup is boiling angrily, so James grabs the dish towel he’s been using as a potholder to pull the soup off of the heat. 

It takes less than a second. The end of the dish towel drags across the burner and there was probably oil on it from a spill a few days ago which bursts into flames. James barely manages not to absolutely freak out and drop the pot and flaming towel. He gets them over the sink and then drops them. The soup splashes everywhere and the towel sputters. James turns the water on and splashes the fire ineffectively. The noodles from the soup eventually clog the drain and the slowly filling sink soaks the rag and eventually the flames disappear with an angry sputter and a hiss of black smoke. 

It takes about thirty minutes to clean all the soup out of the drain and rinse all the ash out of the sink. James stops by the grocery store to buy soup from the deli for Rich.

Rich smiles gratefully when James shows up and sips carefully on the lukewarm soup while they watch the football game in companionable silence. Rich wrinkles his nose after a few minutes, “Why do you smell like smoke?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok hopeless kitchen messes like me, the thing with the oily rag: James (and I) were probably really lucky that water worked in this situation (it probably had something to do with the rag being the thing on fire so it couldn't spread when water was added like a normal grease fire) however, if you suspect your fire is oil/grease based your best bet (according to the internet) is to smother it with baking soda or a metal pot lid as water will only cause it to spread.


	3. Things Go Hazy Without You

James does not touch the frozen hamburgers without Rich. He’s doesn’t have the first clue about how to cook frozen hamburgers without an actual grill, or _with_ an actual grill either come to think of it. They’re already a little tipsy, having spent the afternoon nursing a twelve-pack and watching South Park reruns. The sun is starting to hover over the horizon and it’s been hours since they ate something real. Rich is the one who pulls the burgers out of freezer. He does all the prep work for it, getting the pan set up and placing the frozen patties on it. He goes digging through the fridge and cabinets next.

“You don’t have like any condiments do you?”

James shakes his head, “Sorry.”

Rich chugs the rest of his beer, “Ok, I’m gonna walk down to the store and get burger stuff, you watch the meat. When the edges are gray flip it.”

James nods. “Ok, flip burgers when sides are gray, got it,” he salutes.

Rich grabs his wallet and leaves. 

James is diligent, ok, he stares at those fucking burgers until his eyes start to prickle. He doesn’t really notice how much smoke they’re making until the smoke alarm starts it’s now familiar chirping. James isn’t really sure what to do. Rich didn’t say anything about taking the burgers off the burner and the sides are barely a dull pink, but the smoke alarm won’t shut up, and his eyes are burning. 

“What the fuck, James?” Rich is a hazy shape in the doorway.

“I don’t know, I was watching I swear! I don’t know what happened.” James wails, holding up his hands in surrender, still gripping the spatula.

“Fuck, turn off the stove and get over here.” Rich sighs pushing open the living room windows.

They order a pizza and sit in front of the door working their way through another six-pack. 

“I left you alone for five minutes Nealsy.” Rich shakes his head.


	4. Burn, Baby Burn

On James’ second time called up to Dallas he figures he’ll do a hotel. He’ll get his own place eventually but if he’s learned one thing from being sent down it’s that his spot here isn’t carved in stone. He’s young and he’s good but even he knows sometimes you need to spend a little extra time developing in the minors if you want to be the best. This plan lasts as long as it takes for him to complain to Brad that his flight in was so delayed he had to go right to practice and hasn’t even gotten a chance to check in. 

Brad picks up the duffel James had stuffed into his locker before skate. “This it?” He asks weighing it in his arms. There isn’t much in there, James wasn’t in Manitoba long and he’s been expecting an up and down year so most of his stuff is in boxes in his parents’ basement. He has what he needs and enough money in his bank account to cover anything he forgot. 

When James nods, Brad tosses the bag back to him and basically manhandles James out of the building and into the passenger seat of his car. 

“Um, thanks for the ride and all, but the hotel is the other direction,” James points out as they get on the Eastbound ramp. 

“Yeah, you’re staying with me.” Brad says, as though this was something that was discussed already, which it diffidently wasn’t. James would remember being told he was gonna live with Brad instead of going to a hotel or back to Marty’s (there was no way he was going back to Marty’s, Marty’s kid hadn’t stopped crying once in the entire month James had stayed with them). 

Brad was big on eating right, had a giant fridge full of vegetables and a freezer of meat and was appalled at the bag of McDicks James had come home with one day. Brad did all of the actual cooking for both of them and James usually just made sandwiches if he was on his own. Tonight had been a hard game though, he was hungry and he wanted something more. Normally this was his cue to bug Brad, but the Lightning were in town so Brad was out with his old teammates and James wasn’t to expect him back until tomorrow. There was a carefully wrapped glass baking dish with half a tuna casserole from this afternoon and James figured he could just reheat it, no big deal. 

He uses the oven, since Brad doesn’t have a microwave. It’s not even the first time he’s reheated food using the oven, he knows the drill. He sets it to 350, waits five minutes before putting the casserole in and sets the timer for 20 min. There is no indication that anything has gone wrong until the timer beeps. When James opens the door he hears the crackling. There is a sparking fizzing white spot on the right side of the glowing red bottom coil. James closes the door and turns the heat off. He checks the oven 5 more times over the next hour and the coil hasn’t cooled or stopped the white fizzing. James is about to cry, he can’t turn the oven off, he broke Brads nice expensive oven and now it’s going to burn his nice expensive house down. In a last ditch effort not to cause a house fire, James pulls the plug and, fingers crossed, inches the door open again. The white is gone and the coils are already starting to dim to a much duller red. James writes a note in big black letters not to plug the oven back in and takes his by now very warm and quite crispy casserole to the dining room. It’s still good.


	5. I Melt For You

Paul is infinitely patient, and James isn’t sure exactly how he does it. James has scorched more than a few pots and pans at this point by forgetting he was boiling water or to put oil in before eggs or having the heat too high, or one of the million other little forgetful mistakes he makes. It doesn’t seem to matter though, Paul just laughs and teaches James to soak a pan encrusted with eggs in soapy water or clean up a blackened pot bottom with a soft brush. Most of the time they cook together. James has managed only minor cuts when dealing with knives thus far, much better than his track record with fire, so Paul usually leaves him in charge of any cutting. Once they only have the cooking left, Paul will pull him close an arm loose around his waist and explain what he’s doing and why they added paprika to this dish but not last weeks chicken. 

Paul takes good care of James, and James just wants to return the favor. He’s isn’t even trying anything complicated, just stir-fry pork. It’s takes a little extra time since he wants this to look nice, so he cuts the vegetables and pork into evenish strips. He remembers the oil and actually measures the water and rice out instead of just eyeballing it like normal. He’s got everything set up. The plastic cutting board full of vegetables is sitting on the unused side of the stove, waiting for the oil in the pan to start popping, which is taking forever actually, it doesn’t even feel hot yet. He’s getting flashbacks to broken ovens and being banned from the kitchen forever. He checks to makes sure the burner is turned up enough and notices the way the cutting board is slouching to the side. 

"Fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck” James mutters turning everything off as quickly as possible and grabbing the solid looking edges of the cutting board and lifting it away from the stove. Long white columns connect the burner and the cutting board, thinning near the top until eventually giving way to gravity and crumbling back down to droop across the electric coils and drip down onto the stove. 

“James?” 

“What? Nothing!” James drops the board and whirls around to face Paul leaning on his crutch in the doorway.

“Ok?” Paul hobbles a little closer, and James back up futilely trying to hide the mess he’s made of Paul’s stove. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” James sighs, pushing the chopped vegetables back towards the center of ruined cutting board from where they’d tumbled off when he’d dropped it. 

Paul laughs, low and easy. “Don’t worry about it, these things happen. Here,” he pokes the vegetables, “they seem ok, finish making dinner and we’ll clean the stove afterwards.”


	6. I'm Just Getting Warmed Up

James hasn’t really spoken to Rich since they stopped being on the same team. James was busy trying to prove he belonged on the same ice as The Sidney Crosby and Rich was flushing his life down the drain with a Jack Daniels chaser, neither or which left a lot of time for keeping up with old friends. He thought about calling when the articles about alcoholism started coming out but James didn’t know the right way to apologize for not noticing that something was wrong and every time his hand hovers over Rich’s number he wonders if maybe the reason he never noticed is because he was one of those bad influences Rich mentioned. They certainly got drunk together often enough and maybe Rich is better off if James just stays gone.

So it ends up being Rich who calls him after the trade. His voice is warm and familiar enough that James lets himself be lulled into the idea that things will be like old times. Except Rich has his life together in a way that James is just barely managing. James is vaguely aware that this togetherness is a relatively new development and a couple years ago Rich’s life was about as far from together as it could get. James never saw that Rich though. He knew a Rich who was just about as functional at adulthood as he was and he’s getting to know a Rich whose seems so much better at it than James ever imagined himself being. Rich isn’t the same guy as he was in Iowa and James just wants to show that he isn’t either. He’s not the helpless kid who couldn’t even cook a potato anymore, he can take care of himself now and he can take care of other people too. That was what the chicken casserole was supposed to prove anyways. 

James followed the recipe to a T. He used the apple timer Rich had in his kitchen which made the loudest, most annoying ring to make sure he didn’t let anything burn. The recipe said it would take 45 minutes to cook at 400 degrees fahrenheit. James set the timer and waited in the kitchen so he could be sure to get it out on time. He even found a thermometer so he could be sure the inside was cooked to 165 degrees, like the website said. That’s where the trouble came in. The first time James checked the temperature at exactly 45 minutes it read 120 degrees. So James reset the timer for 10 more minutes and waited. The second time he checked the temperature it said 126. James put the casserole back and looked online for ways to tell if your thermometer was broken. It wasn’t. 15 minutes later the casserole was 128 degrees and when James poked a piece of chicken he could see the bottom was still pink. At an hour and a half and 138 degrees James turned the temperature up to 500 and went to watch TV. Rich was going to be home from his group meeting thing in about 30 minutes and about 5 min before he was due back James turned off the oven and pulled out the casserole. It was black around the edges and the cheese on top was bubbling and brown but when James stuck the thermometer in it read a lovely 174 degrees. 

Rich looked at his serving a little wearily but he didn’t say anything and ate it all. James is pretty sure having your friend eat the dish you burned the shit out of partially on purpose because he feels sorry for your lack of life skills is the opposite of proving that you’re a real adult. But it was edible and within their diet plans and no one got salmonella so he’s going to count it as an overtime loss and give himself a consolation point. Paul backs him up on that.


End file.
